The Vine: July 6, 2011
Long-time reader, first-time et cetera.
A couple of weeks ago, the husband of a woman that I know tangentially just didn’t come home. After leaving her freaking out for a few days and calling the police, he subsequently emailed (emailed!) her to say he wasn’t coming back and was seeing someone else. He still hasn’t come back or seen his daughter. (Oh yeah; they have a baby girl.)
I feel absolutely awful for her and hope she has her friends around her, but my question is a bit different. Over the past few years, I’ve amassed 5 or so stories of these things happening among friends of friends, or acquaintances, sometimes with some kind of grotesque twist (friend-of-friend’s boyfriend walks out on her while she’s in the bath, so she physically can’t chase him). And they just haunt me. I don’t want to ask, why do men do this, because I know women are just as capable; but why would anyone do this? Why ask a woman to marry you, pledge yourself to her, have a baby with her, kiss her goodbye in the morning and then, no warning, just be gone? None of the women saw it coming; there were no obvious signs. So (the real question, obviously): How do I know my husband won’t ever do that to me?
I have no reason to believe he will; he can’t stand to see me hurt or upset. I told him about this particular situation, and he is as baffled and heartsick as I am. But all these other women presumably thought the same. How to make sense of this? How can anyone have real trust and faith in a relationship when these things happen?
Making Peace With Uncertainty
Dear Peace,
If you’ve read The Vine for any length of time, you know why “anyone” would do this. Some people — many people — go to whatever lengths necessary to avoid confronting a difficult situation or conversation. “I resent the way you speak to me in front of the other bridesmaids,” “I think you have a problem with alcohol,” “I don’t love you anymore” — nobody really wants to say those things, because nobody really wants to hear those things. It’s uncomfortable on both sides. Yelling and crying may happen, and usually do. The instinct of many people is to remain silent and wait for a lightning bolt, literal or figurative, because given a choice, they would rather not anger or hurt others — or, more to the point, suffer the consequences of that rage or pain.
In the incidents you mention here, cases where a spouse just folds the tents and splits with no notice, the discomfort/pain avoidance instinct is definitely in play; you can chalk it up to a fundamental lack of courage. You could also argue, for some of them, that the departing spouse has decided on a scorched-earth policy as a perverse way of “making a clean break” or “making it easy on” the other person by “letting him/her hate me.” This is bullshit post-hoc rationalizing, of course, but the kind of person who bolts in this fashion is usually the kind of person who can convince him-/herself that s/he’s done it For The Good Of All. And that part is true, in its way, but…you know. Still.
And below and behind and running through all of that, I believe, is the good-guy syndrome. It’s a variation on why certain exes push so hard for a functioning friendship, like, 18 minutes after you’ve broken up — if you guys are friends, everything’s cool between you, and if everything’s cool between you, your ex doesn’t have to think about or take responsibility for any selfish/shitty behavior. When you see it on a grander scale, when a woman gets out of the tub and sees empty hangers creaking in the breeze of her husband’s abrupt departure, as twisted as it sounds, I think the husband is trying to think of himself as a good guy. If he says out loud, “I don’t love you anymore,” “I don’t want to be married to you anymore,” “I don’t want to be a husband and father after all,” if he admits these things to himself and admits that he doesn’t want to shoulder responsibility for his choices, then he has to think of himself as a fucking baby, or a guy who exists outside heteronormative blah blah, or whatever negative. I can’t swear to this, because “naked and wet S.O.” does not read “run away” to me, noam sayin’, so it’s a theory, that’s all, but I think that, instead of having to admit, to his wife, to himself, to the world that he does not want these duties and these people and this life, which would make him a bad person? He would rather make one crappy hurtful choice about the handling of that, and in his mind, that makes him a basically good guy who did one crappy thing.
Again, I’m not defending it. I’m not even sure this is the thought process. Maybe they’re just like, “Fuggit,” and throw some undies in a bag and that’s it. But I think it’s basically a desire to skip over the painful part of breakups completely and fast-forward straight to Six Months Later.
As for how you know your own husband won’t do it…you don’t. I mean, you do — you can look at the people and the kinds of behavior you surround yourself with, historically speaking, and you can deduce whether he’s going to pull that kind of nonsense. If “can’t stand to see you hurt or upset” tends to take the form of hiding or flight…I mean, you do know these things. We all know about people, unconsciously.
And yet, we don’t. Many of us keep secrets from ourselves, even, never mind from the people we love, or try to love. You can never know everything. You have to trust people, and you have to live up to their trust in you; that’s what love is, handing over your heart and trusting that it won’t get left out on the counter overnight or slammed in a door or something. Sometimes, that trust isn’t warranted, and we always find that out the hard way, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, or try. It just means that some people aren’t good, and the biggest leap, sometimes, is trusting ourselves to handle that if we have to.
Anyway: it’s hard, and these stories are distressing, but I really doubt your husband has a go bag stashed in the garage ceiling. Let yourself freak out about this stuff for a short time; then run a bath, and get in it with him.
Tags: boys (and girls)
Maybe I’m just a sap, but your last line was so kind it made me cry. Yeah, get in a bath with him, so nice. My husband had an online affair last year, and it was really (really) hard on us, but … we survived. And I’m learning to trust again (and addressing what was wrong in the first place). Anyway, personal ramblings aside, Sars was spot on — you can’t predict what people will ultimately do, you just have to trust your gut.
Not just you, Elizabeth_K (and all the best to you and your husband as you work stuff out) – I teared up a bit just reading the kindness in Sars’s whole response, and the last line is spot on.
Peace, I hope these two points don’t come off as uncompassionate…
– Is it possible that you’re exaggerating about how many people you personally know who this has happened to? Five seems like a lot to me. You might be emotionally winding yourself up a bit by including stories you’ve heard about people you don’t really know. If that’s the case, those incidents may not be accurate.
– Just as Sars says that you really do know that you husband wouldn’t do that, I’m not so sure that all five woman had no idea that their husbands were 1.) capable of that kind of behavior, and 2.) not happy in the relationship. I’m not blaming the women — they are certainly the victims of their husbands’ unacceptable behavior and even if they had an inkling on any level, they didn’t deserve that. My only point is that these things really don’t come out of the clear, blue sky, which I hope is…comforting, in a way? That it’s more predictable than that.
Your signature line is the key: making peace with uncertainty is what trust is. I see so many women who check their husband’s texts and emails and phone logs because they “want to trust him.” If they did, they wouldn’t check. Either you trust him, or you don’t — and if you don’t, why marry him? I know it’s never that cut and dried in real life, but still.
Maybe what would help is to try to think about what you would do if he broke your trust. (Having concrete steps in mind always helps me deal; it feels like I have control while my emotions aren’t so). It doesn’t mean he will; it means you’re protecting yourself in the face of the unthinkable, which is usually a good idea as long as you don’t obsess. Actually, like you’re doing in the message you wrote. (!)
And never, never, never feel, or let other people make you feel, like you’re a chump for trusting him. He committed to you, legally and ceremonially; you committed to him. If one of you breaks that trust, it’s on the one who broke it, not the one who relied on it.
Relationships of all kinds require two things: work and a leap of faith. To me, committing to someone has always meant that you are saying you have faith in them, and in the relationship, and that you’re committed to doing the work it takes to keep up the relationship. That’s really all you can do: put the work in, and have some trust. So you just have to trust that your husband will do right by you.
I think in the cases of marriage and parenthood (with the caveat that I have never been married), it’s really hard for people to admit that they don’t want those things, especially parenthood. (I’m iffy about having kids and I can’t tell you how many judgmental looks and comments I’ve gotten.) You’re SUPPOSED to want these things. Married people with kids are looked at as having a successful personal life. So admitting that you really don’t want them after all is, as Sars said, having to say out loud that you don’t want something you’re supposed to want. It’s sort of like how people will try to explain away bad behavior with “I was drunk!” If you don’t remember the situation/pretend the situation doesn’t exist, you don’t have to take responsibility for it.
I have to agree with Jen B’s point #2. You say that you only know the woman distantly – so, you don’t know their relationship well. Speaking from experience, people can be obtuse about reading signs from their partner (says the woman who saw her ex cheat on her with 2 different women before she finally kicked his ass to the curb). Some people just don’t want to admit that their relationship is in trouble.
So, for your own relationship: take stock. Do you have reason to suspect your husband? Are you honest with him, and he with you? If in general you have a stable, honest relationship, you’ll probably be fine. Don’t look for problems, though, because you can find them (damn husband, he can’t do the litter box right!). Just be honest.
Agreeing with Jen B.’s second point above — my sister’s husband left her after two kids and 9 years of marriage, and my parents and other siblings and I were completely shocked. We didn’t see it coming at all. In the fallout, my sister revealed many things about the marriage and her husband’s…issues…that she had kept hidden for years. It wasn’t a surprise to her at all that he left. You don’t always know what’s going on in someone else’s marriage. You generally do know what’s going on in your own.
You are tangentially connected to 5 or so situations where the guy has walked out. On the other side, you are tangentially connected to 100,000 (?) situations where this has NOT occured. I would argue that there are a lot more great guys out there then there are jerks. (The jerks just get all the headlines.) You’ll have to decide which one your husband is, but I bet you already know.
While I’m sure it’s possible that emotionally undisturbed people can pull this kind of thing, in most cases I doubt that’s what we’re dealing with. Garden variety narcissists can justify any action that furthers their goals, as their wants and needs are all that matter to them. Other people just don’t have a conscience, and they are usually extremely charming – most people would be shocked to learn of their inability to feel remorse. They’re called sociopaths, and they don’t care about confrontation (although they are quite cowardly in many ways). Martha Strout’s The Sociopath Next Door is an excellent read. It can be very therapeutic to learn exactly how disturbed and abnormal such individuals are, dismissing any possibility that one could have done anything to change the course of events. It’s them, not you, end of story.
I’m totally with KCK above–people generally do know what’s going on in their own marriage, unless they’re a) totally oblivious or b) intentionally ignoring their issues.
I had a conversation once with a girlfriend who has a wonderful husband, a thriving medical practice, and three beautiful children and I asked her point-blank how she has such a perfect life. Her response? “Years of therapy.” So there you go–even the most amazing-looking marriages have their issues.
From my own experience, marriage isn’t easy, and communication isn’t easy. It’s easier for me, since I’m a pretty direct person who isn’t afraid of a little confrontation, but it’s harder on my husband, who doesn’t like confrontation. Do I think he’s just going to bail on me someday? No, because I try to read him pretty regularly and check in to make sure that things are OK. And sometimes we have really hard conversations, even if neither one of us wants to. But we want to stay together, so we do it.
I think Sars was absolutely spot-on in identifying the motivations people may have who would do something like this. This is more or less how my parents’ marriage ended, although my dad didn’t just up and disappear. He did have the courtesy to tell my mom (out of the clear blue) that he was unhappy in the marriage and was leaving–and he was gone within a few hours, never to return. Seeing the devastation my mom went through in the weeks, months and years that followed was hard. And I believe the road would have been less rough had my dad decided to handle ending their marriage differently. When my mom finally did involve herself in another relationship several years later, she exhibited PTSD-like symptoms. On a few occasions after she and her boyfriend had a fight and he left to go to a bar or something to cool off without telling her where he was going, she completely freaked.
My dad has always been non-confrontational and avoidant and I do think he felt that he just wouldn’t have been able to handle a knock-down, drag-out which is basically why he decided to just up and leave. However, after witnessing the effect this had on my mom, I would say this is probably the single worst way to end a relationship. The pain and discomfort of having a big drawn-out confrontation sucks, but in the long-run I believe it allows for closure and for the other person to feel like their side can be heard…that they have more control over the break-up of a relationship of which they made up 50%, as opposed to having 100% of the feeling of control taken away.
I can say with absolute confidence that I will never end a relationship in this manner.
Echoing the chorus about Jen B. having a point about “knowing” something is off.
Honestly, I think that being left by someone suddenly can come as a shock, but in the aftermath, it’s not unlikely to find that there were obvious signs of trouble that you missed, or ignored, or rationalized away (especially the last one). It’s very easy to do, definitely with a small child in tow, as they tend to focus the wife’s attention away from the husband (am there right now).
At the end of the day, all you can do is check in with your spouse by keeping the lines of communication open. Are you happy? Are you ok? How was your day? Do you want to do X together? If there is trust and good communication on both sides, there’s more of a likelihood that you can work on keeping the marriage healthy together.
While people often know more than they say about their relationships, I will also second the point above about some people being really obtuse. Someone I knew online was having relationship troubles, and finally one night he was coming over to “talk” — even I, through the lens of her narration, could tell he was coming to break up with her, but she finished up saying she thought he might be proposing! Sadly, no, but it made me realize how deeply we cling to a failing relationship that’s very important to us. So maybe rather than being paranoid it could happen out of the blue, just keeping lines of communication open and asking friends for reality checks is the way to trust.
My boyfriend of 4 1/2 yrs just stopped returning my calls one day. I was working two jobs and had an extremely busy week and at first it wasn’t even such a big deal- I just thought I was missing him. He came over every friday and spent the weekend at my place (this had been the routine for years)and he just……..didn’t show up on Friday. Or return my calls on Saturday or Sunday. And by then I had realized that he hadn’t been returning my calls all week and if something had happened to him it would have been days ago and his parents ( who saw him regularly) would have already alerted me. I gave up with the phone calls and there was about a month of me just being in a sort of baffled limbo, until finally one day he called me and was just like,….what?
Apparently, he had thought I might be breaking up with him, and he decided that he just didn’t want to be available for that. He assumed we were still together and that maybe we could just go on, you know, if I wasn’t going to break up with him.
I was both totally stunned by this behavior, and you know, not that suprised. My friends were completely stunned and that was kind of the lesson that I took away from the whole thing- that the behavior of his that led me to be not that suprised I had purposefully kept from my friends and family, because I thought they would judge him or me or “not understand”. I don’t mean that you should spill the private details of your relationship to everyone you know, but that when you conciously hide his (or hers) behavior like that, it says something about your relationship.
I also think you seriously have to look at past relationships. He can only dump you like that once, and you can convince yourself that maybe he acted badly in previous relationships, but hey, you really love each other and he has matured, etc. But I knew that my ex had treated the last girl he was dating in a sketchy manner, but because he described that relationship as “casual”, I didn’t think it related to our serious relationship. It did, of course, because immature, cowardly people are immature and cowardly in all their relationships in all different ways.
In response to your (somewhat unasked) question of why MEN do this-I agree with what Sars’ said-desire to be the good guy, fear of the hurtful conversations, etc. But there’s one aspect she didn’t cover.
You read a lot in the Vine (and I agree) about how girls are socialized to be nice all the time, keep the peace, never make waves/be a bitch, even when it’s warranted.
Well, in the same way, boys are taught from a young age NOT to talk about their feelings. Don’t cry; only baby boys cry. Are you a big baby? Don’t tell on the bully-if you weren’t such a weakling you wouldn’t get beaten up. Don’t get mad-get even. Grow up. Real men don’t talk about their feelings when they get together-they watch sports and drink beer. Only girly men and gays talk about their feelings. Real men don’t say they really don’t wan’t to be fathers-that’s a man’s job. Or they think they have to have kids to have a woman at all. Real men don’t say their marriage isn’t emotionally/mentally/sexually/whatever fulfilling-that’s weak assed shrink talk.
And so, you take all that repressed macho bullshit-and what you end up with is men who are completely terrified of having the tough conversations. And all that frustration and avoidance builds up until…they just leave, seemingly with no warning. And often, it’s triggered by finding another woman who will have them and they think it will “fix” things (9 times out of 10 it won’t).
Understand, I’m not saying this excuses leaving without a word, and certainly not the cheating. This is chickenshit behavior. But you asked why, and I think it’s part of it. As for how you know it won’t happen to you-I think you know, deep down, whether your marriage is happy. And, if you don’t know if your husband is happy, then maybe you should ask. Preferably in that bathtub Sars mentioned. :)
Ho lee sheet, @LDA! I don’t mean to threadjack, but what happened after that? Did you “oficially” break up with him? Bizarro.
Sars, thanks for the general thoughts on good-guy syndrome. I’ve never been dumped in that particular out-of-the-blue way, but I’ve definitely met some guys who are afflicted with milder versions, and it helps as a way to understand that behavior.
My now-husband, when he was my boyfriend, once took off in a manner similar to what you describe. This was early in our relationship (a little over a year in) when we were living together, and he had been upset over work issues. I was off leading a trip for a week, and I came home to an empty house and a note. He left his phone in the house, along with a good amount of his stuff, so I couldn’t call (turns out this was accidental, but it seemed planned at the time). His note was vague enough that I had no idea whether he was leaving, breaking up, coming back, going off somewhere to kill himself (I didn’t think so, but friends of mine were worried about that), or what. He had also effectively quit his job by not showing up for work three days before I got home, so nobody knew where he was. He did come back, about four days later, and it took me a long time to fully trust that he wasn’t just going to leave the next time things got bad.
I learned a few things, though. The first is that it had nothing to do with me: his leaving was all about his inability to clear his head and figure out where his priorities were with some major life decisions, in the physical space he was in. He thought his note covered the “being considerate” aspect of not leaving me in a panic, but he now knows that it really didn’t cut it. More importantly, we have long since arrived at a space where we can talk these things out together. I think if you have such a relationship, where you know you can work things out and that you are both willing to talk to each other about major life issues, then you can feel more secure that your husband won’t just take off. I can say that I hardly ever even think about this incident anymore (and I hope that’s not because I’m in denial!) after six more years together, because we are so clearly at a different stage in our relationship that either one of us haring out is not an option.
This letter reminded me of a Postsecret card I saw on the site about a year or so ago, that has haunted me ever since.
It read something like “429 more days until I can leave”, and showed a collage of graduation ephemera. It clearly was a parent waiting for their child to graduate so they could leave a relationship.
What was even more disturbing was the posted email responses, all from people with their own private countdowns until they left a relationship. I remember being really upset for the spouses/SOs, who I pictured as puttering happily around the house, convinced they existed in a reality that they shared with a loved one, and that loved one was not only planning to leave, but had it planned out in secret part of their minds, down to the day, the hour, maybe the minute.
Now of course I don’t know the story behind these countdowns–exaggeration? abuse? last minute chickening out? spouse leaves before they get to their little personal zero?–but it just freaked me out that someone could be smiling at you, cooking dinner with you, planning next years vacation with you, and all the time they have a big red circle around a date in their head, when they are going to just walk out. (I also flashed on the Dorothy Parker short story “Such A Pretty Little Picture.”)
Sorry, this isn’t the most soothing response, I know, but the fact is love doesn’t mean you can completely know the loved one. That doesn’t mean you should move to an off the grid cabin and polish your gun full time, just that when you’re one of 6 billion plus universes inhabiting a planet and you meet another universe, you must accept they are too complicated, and have areas too remote, to ever be completely explored/understood.
It’s also worth considering checking in with each other about how your lives are going periodically. Not in that “Do you love me as much as the day we were married? How about now? How about now?” kind of way, but in a “Hey, we haven’t talked about anything but the kids for ages. How are you doing? How’s life treating you?” way. (And then, you know, listen.) It’s easier to develop the habit before things get strained, and then it’s part of a routine rather than a situational interrogation.
This happened to me too. My partner and I were together for five years. One day she said she had to go to an evening meeting at work, and asked me to take some chicken out of the freezer so she could cook it when she got home. And then she didn’t come home. I was worried sick all night, and when I went to work the next day, she came home, took all her stuff and left me a note. It was three days before my birthday, and I was completely devastated.
Although her leaving the way she did seemed completely sudden at the time, (why the fuck did she tell me to defrost the damn chicken?) we had been having a lot of problems. I knew that something was just off, but she didn’t want to talk about it. So, I think if something like that happens, it’s not totally out of nowhere, no matter how much we would like to think it is.
I’ve been with my current partner for almost five years now, and it’s completely different, because we talk. We tell each other when we’re having problems, as hard as that is. The discussions that we’ve had, and our ability to be honest with each other (sometimes painfully honest), is what has saved our relationship. So, I think you would know if your husband were planning a getaway. And if you aren’t sure, the best thing you can do is talk to him about it, honestly.
I just wanted to argue against those who claim that the other half in this situation ‘must know’ what’s going on. I’d been with my partner for 4 years, we lived together in an apartment which I owned, and were planning to have children. Last year, I found out that he’d been seeing another woman for 6 months, was engaged to her, and was planning to leave without telling me. During the time he’d been seeing her, we’d spent happy times with my parents, with mutual friends, and a week on holiday with his whole family. At no time did he give any indication of what was going on. He started working away during the week sometimes (actually of course, he was with her) but would text me continually saying he missed me, loved me to pieces, and hated being away from me. All he did was lie over and again, but so convincingly that a friend of mine was physically sick when I told her what he had done. This is not to say that no man (or woman) can be trusted, but that there are some people who can lie to everyone with no remorse, as Jackie D points out above. Having thrown him out of my place and my life, and undergone some intensive therapy, I’ve realised that he is a sociopath. Most people in the world are good, and I’m not going to let him stop me trusting again – just be aware that there are some scumbags out there and you can’t always avoid them.
Happened to a friend of mine… Boyfriend of 4-5 years moved out while she was at work. She came home to a mostly empty apartment because most of the furniture was his. He’d gotten a lease on a new place (in the same complex!) and arranged for a moving company all behind her back. No warning. I mean, their relationship was rocky, and I wasn’t a major fan, but he’d given her no indication of wanting to break up for good, and it was definitely not a spur of the moment decision.
My finance tends to be a ‘hold it all in’ type, and I promised myself I would never ever let my fear of what he’ll think or his fear of what I’ll think get in the way of us talking about our problems. And that I would never let his natural reticence stop me from asking when it seems like something is bothering him. You have to reinforce it every single time you fight or freak-out- that (as long as it’s not abusive) all words are safe. I’m never sorry that we argue because it’s better to be talking about whatever it is than not.
Thanks for your responses, y’all.
I knew when I was writing this that It was a question without an answer, other than that in my signature. But Sars’s thoughts, and yours, have helped.
As for my acquaintance, she still struggles through every day. Her soon-to-be ex-husband promptly got the other girl pregnant, then walked out on HER, so clearly she is better off without him, even if she can’t feel it yet. Did she actually know, is it ever really a surprise? I don’t know for sure, clearly. I’m part of a small, tight message board community with her where we talk extensively about our relationships, so although I’m not a close friend, I’ve “known” her all through her wedding, marriage, and pregnancy, all of which at least seemed to be initiated by him. And she genuinely seemed to fear he was dead for a few days. Yes, I do really know four or five people – not friends, but acquaintances and friends of friends – to whom this has happened. And although they have all been men, and I think ferretrick’s comment about male socialisation is on the money, this comment string shows they don’t have a gender monopoly on it.
And Sars, there’s one question I can answer with an open heart; hating to see me hurt or upset always takes the form of staying with me, and doing what he can to support me. And it’s been altogether too long since I took a bath with him. :o)
I am in the middle of a divorce that I asked for. My ex would say that (and does say) that he never saw it coming, he is shocked etc. The truth is, is that I spent 6 months telling him I was unhappy, and he didn’t take me seriously.
So, I just wonder how many of these distant friends of yours didn’t listen when they were told that their spouse was unhappy?
@ Stella
Actually, now I think about it, no, I didn’t. I told him that I considered us broken up from the moment he stopped returning my calls and I really didn’t know what else to say, and he said that wasn’t his intent and he would change, something, blah, blah.
Honestly, I didn’t believe him and I wasn’t in denial, I was in shock (we were in our late twenties, also, so I hadn’t heard of anyone doing something like this since I was in college). Two days later when I shook it off, after not speaking to him for those two days, I called him to make it clear that we were over and I wanted my stuff back.
It was a few years ago- he contacted me about every three months to try to get back together after that. It lasted until this past January, even though I only replied to tell him to knock it off.
I left my marriage that way by all outside appearances.
I went through trial separations, lies about our finances, hell from his family and friends, a complete lack of caring about my physical well-being after an accident that left me with broken ribs and pneumonia, and him cutting off all physical contact for the last six months we lived together.
I had one of those days when I thought “If one more thing goes wrong…” I told him I thought it best if I stayed home since the latest round of antibiotics was making me queasy, and his response was “Great! that means I can take the ‘Z’!” I stared at him, thinking ‘What the hell?” and he practically skipped out the door. That counted as ‘one more thing’ to me! I called everyone I knew with a truck, packed up everything I could in the five hours I had, and left.
He claimed he never saw it coming…
Yes, it really does happen.
It happened to my aunt’s marriage — he never came home from the store one evening. Didn’t take any of his stuff, just walked out with his keys & wallet & didn’t come home.
It happened to me with a boyfriend — he didn’t pick me up when he was supposed to drive me home one night, he had no contact with me whatsoever (I called his parents to make sure he wasn’t, you know, in a coma) until I ran into him a month later and he said, “Hey, how’s it going?” Trust me, I analyzed everything in detail, trying to see in hindsight if there were signs, and there had been NO SIGNS. His explanation was that he “didn’t want to talk about breaking up” so he just did it by disappearing.
In 1995, I broke up with my first husband (my son’s father) after 11 years of marriage. Two or three months prior, we’d had a conversation wherein I stated, very plainly, the things I was no longer willing to tolerate. When I told him I wanted to split up, he referenced that conversation by saying “I didn’t know you were talking about breaking up.” So, even though he heard the words and knew what I said, it still didn’t occur to him that I actually meant them. (He was the only person who was surprised by the break-up; his friends, my friends and even our then 11-year-old son were unsurprised.)
I just wonder how many of these distant friends of yours didn’t listen when they were told that their spouse was unhappy?
Well, I can’t tell, obviously. But from my perspective, it’s not the apparently sudden end of the relationship that shocks me, it’s the spouse walking out without even a word. My friend’s husband left her thinking for three days that he was dead, after kissing her goodbye and telling her he loved her that morning. The bathing walkout was planned to be sprung suddenly, with no discussion. That’s a dick move in any language, no?
I admit that I have somewhat collected these stories, because they have a haunting fascination for me which no doubt speaks to my own issues of abandonment and control. I just could not understand the thinking.
So many insightful comments. It’s true you don’t really know another person. I’ve had my own experiences with this. But you can know another person better by active listening. According to the experts, if you are thinking about what to say in response while the other person is still talking then you are not actively listening. I’ve caught myself doing this from time to time.
I once accidently saved a marriage by actively listening to someone bitch about her husband. I’m not a therapist or anything. I was just being a friend. The next time I talked to her everything was great. I thought for sure she was going to divorce him. I was never so surprised in my life.
I remember an interview with Margaret Thatcher when she was running for PM (which isn’t exactly what happens in UK politics, but you know what I mean), in which she was questioned about whether or not women had the strength for political leadership. Her response was that historically, men could bolt from their responsibilities easily — they could go off to war, explore new lands, go off to the next village to find work (or ‘find work’), hang out with their buddies in the local bar, work 18 hours a day in the mines, and many other options to leave the quotidien details of homelife behind. Women, for the most part, don’t have that option. They can’t just run off (which is why, when they do…Casey Anthony… it’s so shocking) — they have to cope. They have to find a way to get through the day.
So I guess my point for Peace is, this kind of behavior is and has always been available to men in a way it isn’t for women. They have someplace to ‘go to’, at least in their heads. And once they’ve made that decision, like Sars says, they can leap to “Six Months Later” into the life they think they ought to be living. Cleaning up what’s left behind is somebody else’s job.
A similar thing happened to a friend of mine in a long distance relationship. The guy was supposed to be moving to her state, the night before he told her all about packing and giving away his sick guinea pig, and then said he was worried he wouldn’t have very good reception on the road, but that he would try to call her from a motel.
Three days went by without a word, she called his family and they said “He’s here, he’s fine, he was never moving to California.”
This is a pretty fascinating (if somewhat depressing) thread. I think there are all sorts of reasons why someone may leave so suddenly, and only the person him- or herself really knows what they are. My husband was clinically depressed during his first marriage, and he said that one time during the worst of it his ex-wife went into the store while he waited in the car, and he said it took every fiber of his being not to walk out of that car and out of her life forever. (He didn’t; I like to think it’s because he’s ultimately a great guy and couldn’t do that to someone.)
He and I almost broke up about a year and a half into our relationship; he was tempted by an old crush who had popped up on Facebook and started flirting with him. It was hell for me. I was devastated and hurt and moved out for awhile (not without telling him first), but we talked things through and eventually built back up our trust. Of course there’s a part of me that wishes it hadn’t happened, but I know that it was ultimately good for our relationship – we have proof that we can weather storms that may come up for us, and he knows that he can talk to me about problems rather than having to run and hide because he knows I’m a big girl and he doesn’t have to fear my reaction.
“I think that, instead of having to admit, to his wife, to himself, to the world that he does not want these duties and these people and this life, which would make him a bad person? He would rather make one crappy hurtful choice about the handling of that, and in his mind, that makes him a basically good guy who did one crappy thing.”
This, oh God, this. My husband walked out in November (and then came back, and we fumbled around things for ages before finally calling it quits just last week), after ten years of soulmates and “of course I want kids” and so on. Now, of course there were warning signs, but I still feel like he kept me hanging for at least a couple years when he KNEW that he didn’t want this life anymore, but didn’t dare say so, and I thought that he was depressed but still basically committed to a life with me and all the plans we’d made over a decade. And then he bolted. I found out he’d packed when I was putting away the laundry and his drawers were empty.
And yes, he never ever really took responsibility for any of it. He felt guilty, but wanted to be punished rather than take any steps himself to figure out why he did this and how not to do it again.
We are still in touch, and I actually e-mailed him a link to this Vine post, saying READ THIS.
It’s happened to me, too… my boyfriend of four years had to make a decision about marriage with me, since he was moving for a job and I’d have to give up my job to move with him. He moves, he signs up for a dating service behind my back, he dates on weekends I don’t fly in for a visit. On the day he was going to give me his decision, he ignores my calls and emails me the next day to say he wasn’t ready (and for me to stop calling).
So, whatever, that was years ago now and I’m totally over it/him.
Here’s the thing: there were signs. Tons of signs. And I promise that there were tons of signs for each and every woman who saw it get to that point with their husbands or boyfriends.
You can’t be sure it won’t happen to you. Those guarantees don’t exist. Part of the reason it happened to me is that, over time, my boyfriend became the type of person capable of it – he didn’t start out that way. It’s easy to think back to earlier / better times and ignore what’s going on RIGHT NOW in your relationship.
Now that I’ve sufficiently spooked you, let’s talk about how you deal with having this fear in your life. First, you recognize that’s a super-awful thing to do to someone, and anyone who’d do that to someone is scum of the earth who you’re WAY better off not being MARRIED to. Second, you believe you’re worth being treated well and having a good man in your life — but you know you’ll be okay even if you’re alone. Even in a marriage, it’s very important for you to know you’ll be okay alone. Life is unpredictable; even the most devoted husband isn’t guaranteed to stay alive & well for all the remaining moments of YOUR life. (By the way: if you find you want/need a counselor to help you with this stuff, or even an anti-depressant, it’s VERY worth it if it helps you get there).
Plus, all of this will make it a lot easier to recognize the signs of an up-and-coming scumbag if it ever happens your beloved morphs into one.
This has happened to me!
I’d been living with my boyfriend for about three years when I went away for a weekend with a couple of friends. I returned to an empty house, except for an airbed he had thoughtfully inflated for me and a TV.
I was shocked, my friends and his were shocked, family, colleagues etc were shocked. I couldn’t believe he would leave without giving any indication of his intention. I couldn’t believe he would sneak away and not do the honorable thing and face me.
Except deep down I wasn’t really surprised. He had been saying for months he wasn’t happy and things needed to change. I just thought he would be “happy” to stay indefinitely in our toxic relationship.
He contacted me a week later and told me he couldn’t face the scene I would have made. It was hard enough making the decision to go without dealing with the wailing, pleading, begging etc from me.
Now, years later, I can see he was right. The relationship was going to end either way, I would have responded as he predicted and I would have felt shit about myself for behaving that way.
I can’t say this is true for all people in this situation, but he is not a bad person. He was in an unhappy situation and his leaving without facing me was self-preservation. When I see him now (we sometimes run into each other as my parents live in the same city as him) I can face him feeling ashamed of my behavior at our break up.
In the end it was the best for everyone. It just didn’t look like it for the first few days.
Late to the party, but this really struck me as I was catching up on my Vine reading, especially this bit from Mand’s comment:
“Except deep down I wasn’t really surprised. He had been saying for months he wasn’t happy and things needed to change. I just thought he would be “happy” to stay indefinitely in our toxic relationship.”
YES.
My ex-husband swears I just up and left with no warning and that there was nothing wrong beyond the usual little stuff like bickering about how often the trash should go out. The thing is, I had been fighting tooth and nail to get him to see how miserable I was and how toxic our marriage was, and he refused to see it. Even strongarming him into counseling didn’t get the message across.
So I have a lot of sympathy for the leavers whenever I hear stories like this. I always think, “what are they leaving out?” I’m perfectly willing to believe some folks never actually try to fix anything, they just bail — but as someone accused of that when it wasn’t the case at all, it’s a hot button issue for me.
Nobody outside the relationship can really know what went down.